Maybe it doesn't matter for a car because feeling the car's motion tells you most of what you need to know. A car is not meant to touch anything but the road, in normal conditions. I think steering is the only case where force feedback is very important for a car - In the winters up here, I can feel the steering go loose when I hit a patch of ice.

I imagine an excavator, meant to touch and dig through things, and lift things, benefits from force feedback for the same reason VR would.

Have you played those VR sword games? BeatSaber works great because you're cutting through abstract blobs that offer no resistance. But the medieval sword-slashing games feel weird because your sword can't impact your opponent.

I saw a video recently of a quadcopter lifting heavy objects. When it's overloaded, it can't maneuver because all its spare power is spent generating lift to maintain altitude. If the controls had force feedback, the copter's computer could tell you "I'm overloaded, I can't move" by putting maximum resistance on the sticks.

Interestingly, we had some people try out VR teleop: https://x.com/Scobleizer/status/1970245161306464667

https://x.com/jash_mota/status/1969091992140304703

I think force feedback is key for small excavators, but not really true for 25+ tons excavators. Hence how easy it is for operators to accidentally kill someone with it.